


a heavy leaf to turn

by outwardbound93



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Coming of Age, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-22
Updated: 2016-03-22
Packaged: 2018-05-28 07:18:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6319843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outwardbound93/pseuds/outwardbound93
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>it only takes them ten years to get it right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a heavy leaf to turn

**Author's Note:**

> for the lyric prompt from walk the moon's song 'portugal.' i also highly recommend their song 'come under the covers' for this fic.

2012

Harry wakes Niall up just to say goodbye. Niall wakes up in lurches, like his drunken self trying to walk, to Harry kissing his face over and over again, soft and sweet. “What?” he asks brilliantly.

“Got a train to catch, love,” Harry says with a smile. Niall’s fingers tangle in the hair at the back of his head to hold him close. He might not be awake enough to kiss back yet, but he likes Harry’s gentle mouth on his face, especially when his breath smells like apples and peaches. “Got to go,” Harry whines, and makes no move to pull away.

“Don’t,” Niall suggests. He loops one arm around Harry’s neck and successfully pulls his head down to the pillow that’s gone scratchy and stiff with too many washes.

Harry lets out a gusty sigh. “Hey,” he says.

“Hm,” Niall asks, his eyes already closed again. His bed smells like Portuguese green wine and the mattress springs squeak under his and Harry’s combined weight, and Niall’s perfectly comfortable. Now if only Harry would climb back under the covers with him, they could wake up at a decent hour and get lunch for half-price from the café where Niall buses tables and drink some more green wine by the pool later with their mates.

“I have to go,” Harry says. He smooths his palm up Niall’s bare arm. “Don’t tell me you’ll miss me.”

Niall laughs quietly. “Alright.”

Harry leans in for one last, lingering kiss, that’s just his mouth tenderly pressed to Niall’s, and then he crawls off the bed.

“Maybe I’ll see you around,” Niall says, helpless to himself. It’s always good to leave that door open, he thinks. Means Harry can come back through it someday.

Harry says, “Maybe you will,” with a smile. He crosses the closet-sized room and kisses the tips of his own fingers. He presses them to Niall’s forehead, murmurs a soft, “Later, gator,” and then he’s gone.

Niall wakes up proper an hour and a half later with a desperate urge to pee. He throws back the covers and sits up too fast, everything spinning round his head like the teacup ride at a fair. Niall tugs a pair of boxers up his skinny legs and stumbles to the bog, where Bressie’s already loudly singing “Singing in the Rain,” so Niall pushes the front door open and hobbles over to the fronds in the little plot of a garden out front.

Peeing while drunk is such a great experience; Niall never understands why peeing when he’s hungover makes him want to throw up and then die. Niall more or less crawls to the nearest pool lounger and curls up to await his death, or for Bressie to find him and offer to get them both polvo à lagareiro from the place down the road with free crackers.

“There you are, chief,” says Bressie some ten minutes or so later. The sun is rising and baking Niall’s delicate peachy skin like the crust of a pie but he can’t make himself care. Harry’s such a lucky bastard, all he does is tan.

Harry. Niall rolls onto his back and watches Bressie do his usual series of stretches. He and Harry used to do ‘em together while Harry was waiting for Niall to power on, so he said once. Power on. Like Niall’s some kind of robot. He’s not sure why that felt like such an endearment except for the tone in Harry’s voice when he’d said it, the way he’d circled his arm around Niall’s waist after and ducked his face into Niall’s shoulder.

“You’re roasting out here,” Bressie finally ventures, once he’s all loose and limber. Probably. Niall tried to stretch along with them once for about five minutes and then Harry pinched his arse so he’d jumped and clipped his head on one of the planters hanging from the eaves, and long story short Niall’s got a good scar on his brow now why he doesn’t participate. His excuse, as Harry says. “Gonna go back to Trinity after this looking like a Portuguese lobster.”

Niall rolls onto his stomach so at least it’s just his back cooking slowly under the hot sun. The scorching sunlight feels so good now that he’s not sure how he’s going to go back home to Ireland and the drizzling gray rain, and all the lush deep green trees. He’s grown used to broad warm sunshine and the smell of the ocean on the breeze and the bleached blue of the sky, the bright orange rooftops set atop pastel-colored buildings. Niall thought he’d stumbled into a Dr. Seuss book on the bus from the airport to his study abroad housing.

He’d planned on a summer packed full of day drinking, hanging out at the beach, and going to just enough classes to scrape by. He’s here to learn Portuguese, after all, Niall told himself. No better way to learn it than from people who’d been speaking it their whole lives, right?

Three weeks, four hangovers, and two blistering sunburns after he arrived in Portugal, Niall met Harry at a club. Strobe lights overhead flashed across the crowd and the DJ at her station blasted a Portuguese remix so loud that Niall could feel the reverb through the soles of his feet, through his teeth, all the way down to his heart. Harry approached him looking as sweet and soft as a mangaba, and Niall hadn’t been able to look away from his mouth. A few drinks later and they were stumbling back to the tiny flat he shares with other Trinity College study abroads, and yeah, Harry tasted as sweet as he looked.

“Good,” Niall just says. He’s noticed freckle across the bridge of his nose, too. The tattoo artist turned him away from getting the Portuguese flag tattooed on his arse, so it’s nice to have something that won’t go away. Like a reminder.

Bressie finishes his stretches, so Niall hauls himself out of the pool lounger and goes to put a pair of shorts and a tank top on, and then they go up the road for lunch. Niall heats up the grill by the pool for dinner and the usual lot turn out to drink cheap wine and listen to dance music, and Niall’s there in the middle of it all. He always has a great time. If it seems a little less fun for some reason, Niall doesn’t think too hard about it. It’ll pass.

***

2016

Harry picks up a job at There for the Baking to offset the cost of uni. What that really means is he gets through his first year of uni and goes home for the summer so achingly homesick he’s not sure he can go back. He loves it, mind, he just…misses the people he loves the most. He didn’t miss them so much when he was traveling all around Europe by train on his gap year. Harry thinks it’s because he’s expected to be emotionally mature and self-sufficient now, and really all this grown up stuff just makes him miss his mum more.

So he started working at a bakery for the familiar smell of bread baking in the ovens and fine flour on his hands and dusted in his hair, and he feels better. And he’s made some sick mates, too. The bloke he works for, James, introduced him to his old mate Nick, who works in radio. James gave Nick a sweet deal for his wedding cake, which basically meant that Harry baked it and decorated it for free.

Harry doesn’t mind. He pushes his sleeves up and adds the very last row of tiny crystallized sugar flowers to the edge of the cake’s topmost layer, and then it’s finished. Done. Just in time for him to load it into the back of the van and transport it to the wedding.

The bakery is quiet and somehow very still without James bustling around loading loaves in and out of the kilns or chatting shit with the customers who wander through the door for a croissant and some good old fashioned gadding. Harry loves the way Jim from the accounting office across the street and Melissa from the print shop up the road make the effort to come in to James’s little bakery for the experience. The baristas at Starbucks are lovely and well-trained but they don’t have the luxury about asking after the eldest of Melissa’s two children, or how Jim’s ficus is growing in his office.

Harry’s just got a few weeks of uni left though, and then he’ll have to decide what to do next. Part of him wishes he could just keep things the way they are forever.

Harry changes into his suit and tie in the bathroom at the back of the bakery. He looks more like himself every year, that’s what his mum says. Harry thinks he understands what she means, now. Not just how he’s grown into his ears or his smile but the way he’s started to really wear them, the way they’ve become more ingrained in his face by virtue of how hard he’s worn them. He won’t have an unwrinkled face. Harry’s quite pleased by that idea.

He loads the cake with the same care he’d give to James’s wee newborn baby, and then he climbs behind the wheel and starts the slow and careful drive to Chapel-en-le-Frith, where Grimmy’s getting hitched in a rambling country house.

Harry gets caught in traffic and at one point he pulls over to help a little old lady across the road, but he still arrives with five minutes to spare. Grimmy finds him when he’s carefully reversing the van up to the chateau’s rear entrance so that he can sneak the cake in without anyone noticing.

“The big day,” Harry beams. He opens his arms wide.

“Why isn’t James out here helping you?” Grimmy asks. He wrings his fingers together. “Where’s he at, hm? Don’t you need some help?”

“I loaded it myself, I can unload it too,” Harry answers patiently.

Grimmy stuffs his fist in his mouth when Harry carefully slides the twenty-pound cake out of the back of the van. He sets it on the rolling cart he pulled out of the back of the van just a minute ago. Harry watches Grimmy interestedly, not least amused. “Do you have cold feet?” Harry asks. He frowns. “Do you need the van as a getaway car? I don’t think I approve, mind, Dougie is such a sweet lad.”

“No,” says Grimmy. He circles Harry and the wedding cake cart like some kind of strange loving vulture, or maybe a dog with its pup. Harry’s not sure if he’s the pup or if the cake is or if Grimmy’s not actually about to start rolling down the hallway and wrinkle his nice suit, so he parks the cart in the kitchen and puts his hands on Grimmy’s shoulders. “What.”

“You need a shot,” says Harry, “and everything will be fine. You love Doug. He loves you. You’ll both be very happy together.”

Nick lets Harry serve him a shot of the only liquor he can find, some truly pungent honey whiskey that was waiting in the back of the kitchen cupboard like it’s all part of the wedding day ceremony. Nick knocks his shot back and then, when the honey warm alcohol is settling in his belly, smiles at Harry. He opens his arms and Harry goes straight in for the hug, humming against Nick’s familiar warm chest.

“Been the best mate I’ve ever had, you have,” Grim says into his hair. “Love you like none other.”

Harry breathes deep. “Me, too,” he says. It doesn’t quite feel like a lie. Just, he sort of understands the way Grimmy can love him special and still go home to Doug every night. Harry thinks he might’ve had someone like that once, maybe. But instead he hopped on a train and by the time it pulled into the station in Spain, he’d thought – well. He’d not expected that his rite of passage summer love would still pop up in the streets in every blond-headed stranger with broad shoulders Harry sees, like he’s waiting to see Niall again. He’s not.

He’s not, Harry tells himself.

Harry serves as Nick’s best man, which basically means clapping him on the back when he and Doug meet each other in the middle of the little chapel and Grimmy starts choking on his tears. It’s an easy gig, all things told. Harry’s sure of it, which is what Grimmy kept him around for. Keeps. Kept, really. Harry’s happy for him but even as he watches Grimmy and Doug attempt their first ill-fated waltz around the dance floor, he knows he’ll see less of his friend now. They have a two-week honeymoon cruise and then Grimmy starts doing evening radio and Harry goes to bed halfway through his show. And nothing stays the same, he knows.

Nick finds Harry sipping champagne with Nick’s nan after the ceremony. He rolls his eyes and loops his hand round the crook of Harry’s elbow. “Come, you’ve got to meet my new crew.”

“Okay,” says Harry. Just because their lives are spreading apart a little doesn’t mean he’s not interested.

“The station just hired them,” Nick goes on. Used to he thought Harry had an interest in radio but really Harry has an interest in anything that moves, so he prattles on filling Harry’s head with mostly useless information till they find the gents they’re looking for outside on the patio. The chateau’s awning shades them from the setting sun and they look timeless and elegant, like something Harry would love to photograph.

He doesn’t recognize Niall at first sight, much as he’s looked for him. Memory has skewed Harry’s perception of him so that at first Niall’s nose is too big and his eyes too blue, and then he lets out a laugh, and Harry knows it’s him. He’s pulling right past Nick and heading for Niall’s arms without so much as a second thought.

He almost makes it, too. Then he notices the beautiful brunette tucked under Niall’s arm, the way he presses his mouth to the top of her head, and he rocks on his heels.

Oh. That’s all he can think is, Oh. Oh, oh, oh. There’s someone he thought he’d never see again and there he is with his girlfriend/fiancée/wife and here’s Harry, caught somewhere in the middle, wanting to get closer and knowing he shouldn’t, for his own sake. Feels like he’s always here.

“I – Harry?” Nick asks, flummoxed.

Harry shakes his head. “Nothing,” he murmurs. “Thought I saw – something.”

“Okay,” Nick says. He puts his hand on Harry’s back and steers him the rest of the way up to his station’s new hires. “Harry, this is Eoghan McDermott, and Niall Horan,” Nick nods his head. “Gentleman, this is my best man, Harry.”

Before Niall can cut in and – and make it so they can’t at least be friends, so that Harry can’t pretend, he thrusts out his hand. “Harry,” says Harry, and gives Eoghan a smile, then Niall. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Harry waits to see what Niall will do on tenterhooks. He can’t believe how _much_ of him there is, how strongly he smells and how solid his slender body is and how hard he breathes, the way laughter trills on his words. Harry didn’t know he missed him till now.

Eoghan gives a smile like the bubbles at the top of a flute of champagne and shakes his hand enthusiastically, his lilting Irish accent a little like magic. Niall shakes his hand, too, adds, “This is Amy, my girlfriend.” Amy shakes Harry’s hand last, and her hand is small and cool and dry. She smiles like the sun breaking over a hilltop, and Harry can’t even bring himself to be anything but happy for them.

Harry makes polite small talk for as long as he can manage, and then he excuses himself to refill his champagne flute. He resumes his seat at the table where James is sat with his newborn baby asleep in his arms, his eyes on his wife on the dance floor, and he. He’s alone.

Harry takes out his phone and shoots off quick “Miss you, how are you?” texts to Gem and to his mates from school. He sees the tips of Niall’s wingtip shoes before he sees him. “Shoes like my granddad,” Harry says. He looks up to Niall’s smiling face. “I like it.”

“Now, that is a weird thing to say to someone you’ve just met,” says Niall. He pulls out the chair next to Harry’s and settles in. James doesn’t so much as look over, angel that he is. So used to people living their lives in the front of his little shop without being a key player in it that he’s not bothered. Harry aches. “Seeing as we’re strangers and all,” Niall says.

“I panicked,” admits Harry. “I don’t know. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”

Niall smiles. The dimple on his left cheek pops into existence, and even though the lights have gone dim and low inside this beautiful ballroom with a melting ice sculpture of a pair of dolphins, his smile is bright. “Me, neither,” he says. “Happy surprise.”

Harry nods. Niall observes him with the same interest that Harry’s giving Niall. He feels like his eyes are giant spotlights, a dead giveaway, and he doesn’t want to be that guy. But he can’t keep his eyes off the hair on Niall’s forearms, the tie loosely knotted around his thick neck, the spray of freckles trailing up to his face that always reminded Harry of paint spatter, of chocolate chips, of stars. He looks like something Harry thought he left behind.

“You look older,” says Niall, and he does, too. Less bright-eyed, maybe; cooler, more controlled. “It’s good – it’s good to see you again, really.”

“You too,” says Harry. “I – do you remember that song you used to sing when you were drunk? The one about the factory girl?”

Niall’s brow wrinkles in confusion, and then he laughs. “No, no, it was – _I kissed my girl, by the factory wall…_ ”

“Yes!” Harry says. Some essential tension leaks out of him. “I’ve been wondering that for years.”

“Glad I could help.”

“Glad you’re back,” Harry says, although that makes no sense. Niall’s never been here before, and he’ll probably never come back to this lovely French chateau again. And Harry was the one who left. But it feels right, somehow. Like maybe he’s just glad Niall’s back in his life. Or something.

Niall smiles. If it looks like there’s something of regret in his face, he doesn’t talk about it. Just says, “I’ll see you around, yeah?”

Harry nods. He spots Amy at the edge of the dance floor. As if she can feel his eyes on her, she spots him, and Niall, and starts the walk over.

On his drive home that night, Harry thinks, that’s the end of that maybe. His biggest maybe, his biggest what-if. He mentally packs it into boxes like when he’d moved away from home for uni and puts it away in the attic with the rest of the things he’ll unpack in time.

***

2018

Niall comes home from work one day at ten o’clock in the morning with plans to sleep for the rest of the day and then watch the Derby match he missed with a big bowl of popcorn in his lap. The AM radio slot gets a huge amount of traffic from people commuting to work, and who aren’t usually too happy about it. The AM slot is a good match for Niall’s personality, and he loves his job. He just wishes he could convince his body that waking up at four o’clock in the morning is a good idea. Four months in and he’s still not quite won that one.

Bressie’s left the mail on the table by the door with the dish for their keys like he does every morning. Niall picks it up and idly shuffles through the crisp white envelopes, expecting this month’s dental bills and maybe cable, too.

Instead he gets an invitation to a funeral. Niall’s not quite sure if invitation is the right word, but he thinks death notice is too harsh and clinical, so. He stops trying to distract himself and jams his key under the lip of the envelope to slide the card out. Niall might not know who she is except that Harry’s in the picture, a little boy sat on his grandma’s lap. It’s the smile that gives him away.

Niall wears his nicest black suit to the funeral, the one with the subtle checkerboard pattern that Nick made him get when Niall started the AM gig. Said he’d be sure to find a reason to wear it eventually. Niall sort of hates that he has.

Nick and Doug and Eoghan and Fifi and the whole radio lot are there, as well as a handful of characters that Niall remembers from Nick’s holiday parties over the years: James, and his beautiful wife, and their two children, and Ben and his wife, and even Cal, who took Niall out to the course a few times.

Harry’s hair is longer now, curling just above the tops of his shoulders. His face is so much more serious, somber, even when he laughs. Funny how Niall never thought he’d miss Harry’s careless abandon.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Niall says, when he’s murmured a Hail Mary over Harry’s nan’s casket and moved on to shake hands with his family. “I wish I’d gotten a chance to know her.”

“She’d have loved you,” Harry says, smiling faintly. He’s flanked by his sister and his mum on either side and Niall doesn’t dare to longer, not now, not after so long. He’s watched the years roll past between them like ships in an Alaskan night, with Harry peeking over the tops of the waves in sporadic bursts. At James’s kid’s fifth birthday, at Grimmy’s and Doug’s third anniversary party, where Grim broke his finger and Doug got a black eye and Niall’s never been more sure of love.

Sometimes Niall wonders if all the stuff he feels every time he looks at Harry is just stuff he feels for himself, for the inevitable march of his own life. He just doesn’t think he’d feel it so hard for himself, is all.

“She’d love everyone for coming,” Gemma adds. “Thank you so much for being here.”

Niall nods. “Anything I can do, I mean…I’m here.”

“We know, love,” says Anne. “Thank you again.”

Niall reckons maybe that’s the end of it until Harry slides into the backseat of the minicab next to him. His fingers are curled around the neck of a bottle of brandy and the side of his leg pressed against Niall’s is warm. “Coming with you,” Harry says. “I hope you don’t mind.”

The driver turns around to look at Niall.

Niall can see Harry out of the corner of his eye, the set of his wobbly lower lip like he’s trying to look disdainful. Niall thinks about putting his hand on Harry’s knee, settles for touching the back of his hand instead. “Yes,” says Niall. “Yeah, let’s go home, then, please.”

Harry stares out the window for the drive. He keeps his hand clamped over Niall’s knee, leans into his side every time the car turns a corner and pulls Niall away from him. “Have you eaten?” Niall asks, as gently as he can.

“Sick of funeral food,” is all Harry says, so they stop for McDonald’s. Niall gets a couple of Big Macs and a ten-piece chicken nugget meal with lots of barbecue sauce and two large cokes. Harry slurps on his coke while Niall gets the door to his flat open.

It’s only eight o’clock at night, but it feels so much later. It feels like the end of a very long night out, when the fun’s been mostly drained out of it and Niall just wants to crawl into bed. He crosses to the fridge and the cupboard beside for paper plates and checks the whiteboard. Bressie’s left a note saying he’ll be out with Laura for the rest of the evening, will miss you tonight Nialler. Niall draws a little x in the corner for Bressie, the great sop, and then he brings a couple of beers back to the living room.

Harry’s already struggled out of his black coat and his shoes, and he’s working on his crisply starched button-up when Niall rounds the corner. There’s an unfocused look in his eye, but Niall knows better than to press. Just sets the bottle on the coffee table for him and picks up the remote. “What do you want to watch?”

“Anything,” says Harry. “Something sad.”

So Niall puts on _Interstellar._ He picks at his chicken nuggets and his fries and watches Harry eat half his burger and then start in on the brandy. “Irish funeral,” Niall says, “we’d talk about all our best stories of your nan.”

“I don’t want to,” Harry says, soft.

“That’s okay,” Niall says. He fidgets with the remote and tries not to think about the records out of their sleeves on the armchair in the corner and his jean jacket drying on the mantle from yesterday’s rainstorm. He wonders what his flat looks like to Harry, who last knew him living out of a tiny little place with five other coeds who regularly gave them shit for being too loud in bed.

They watch Matthew McConaughey stride around like some sort of swaggering space cowboy while Harry oozes steadily further and further into Niall’s side. He still licks his lips the way he used to, and then his soft palm is on Niall’s cheek. Harry murmurs, low, “Don’t want to talk at all, actually,” and drags his mouth across Niall’s.

Niall wasn’t sad before, really, because he didn’t get a chance to know Harry’s nan and he doesn’t think it’s so terribly sad when someone very old is moving on. His dad always said that moving house is a part of life, and a body’s just another house. But now something aching and heavy settles in Niall’s chest, like he’s lost something, too.

He lets Harry push him over till he’s flat on the couch, Harry settling over him like they’re sharing a pool lounger for the night again because Niall lost his keys. Niall kisses back as long as he can, but he turns his face aside when Harry’s hand goes for his fly to murmur, “Shouldn’t, Haz, not like this. Go to sleep, love. Tomorrow’ll be –”

“I don’t want tomorrow,” Harry cuts him off. “I want to go _back._ ” His voice cracks on the last word. It feels like a bolt of lightning, it’s so loud in this little flat full of two people who don’t know what they’re doing. Harry starts crying almost as soon as the words are out, so Niall levies himself up. He wraps his arms around Harry’s shoulders, Harry’s hands fisted in his shirt.

“I know,” says Niall, helplessly. He rubs Harry’s back and listens to Harry’s muffled sobs lessen into hiccups.

“Jesus,” says Harry, pulling himself away. “We hardly know each other anymore and I’m – I shouldn’t have, I’m sorry.”

Niall grabs Harry’s shoulder, surprises himself with how fast he caught him, like he couldn’t bear to let him move away. Maybe there’s some truth to it. Something bright and gilded rises up in Niall’s chest like a rubber duck splashing to the surface in the bath, but now’s not the right time. Not the right time. He clears his throat and says, instead, “I’m not.” Harry sits back on his heels and watches Niall, who tries not to fall apart a little under his heavy gaze.

“My nan and I used to bake,” Harry finally volunteers. “Like. I don’t know.”

“Irish funeral,” Niall nods. “Okay.” Harry picks at his fingernails, so Niall ventures, “We can cook. Bake, I mean.”

Harry pokes around Niall’s kitchen for a few minutes and by the time declares, “You’ve not got anything to cook with, honestly how are you not starving,” he sounds much more like himself.

Niall shrugs. “Eat out a lot,” he admits. “Eat at the station.”

“I always liked it there,” Harry says. “When Grimmy was there, I mean, and I’d go hang with him. Seemed, I don’t know. Like taking the diamond out of a ring. Makes the diamond all the more precious somehow, you know?”

Niall nods. “Yeah, yeah. You could drop by again sometime, if you wanted. I wouldn’t let them kick you out.”

Harry smiles weakly. “Maybe,” he says.

“I’ve got stuff for cupcakes,” Niall tells him. “I make the best in the world, according to me da. So of course it’s true.”

Harry raises his eyebrows. “Yeah?” he asks. “Prove it.”

So that’s how they end up sat on the floor, eating cupcake batter out of the bowl while the oven warms. “I always kind of hated that I left,” Harry admits. “that day in Lisbon, in Portugal, when my train came in. I remember going to the station and feeling, I don’t know. Like my whole life could’ve been different.”

“‘S a good life,” Niall says, soft, doesn’t really know why. He knows what Harry means. It’s so strange to be sat beside him now because he’s still Harry. His hair is longer and curls gently over the tops of his shoulders and his mouth is the same shade of pink, his eyes as green as the cheap wine they used to drink. Everything’s changed and they’re still the same.

Harry leans his head back against the cupboards. “I want to quit my job,” he says. “I don’t think law’s it for me, honestly.”

“So quit,” Niall says. “Really. If it all goes tits up, you can stay with me and Bressie. You’ll have to chip in for Derby County match parties, though,” he adds.

Harry smiles. It feels soft, genuine. It feels like the way he’d kissed Niall’s face that last day in Portugal, that last time they were together. “I’ll think about it,” he says.

The oven overhead dings, so they set about filling the metal cupcake tin and paper cupcake sleeves with dough. The red velvet cupcakes come out of the oven tasting so sweet they don’t even have to bother with icing.

***

2022

Niall tells Harry, “I should never have let you leave that morning,” one day while they’re watching the rest of their scrimmage footie team run back and forth across the grass. Niall’s been fouled out, Harry’s been politely asked to please sit down till they even the score with the other team.  

Harry blinks, a feeling in his chest like – like something clicking into place, like the taste of shepherd’s pie just the way his mum made it, like packing up his flat after graduation and knowing that whatever else, he’d completed it.

“That’s okay,” says Harry. “It’s a good life.”

***

Harry’s in the back rolling out dough to cut into strips for biscotti when Matty, who always puts too much flour into the bread dough, pokes his head in and shouts, “You’ve got a customer!”

“Then why don’t you ring them up?” Harry asks. Matty is Barbara’s grandson or Harry would, as kindly and gently as possible, suggest that maybe a bakery wasn’t best place for him to work. And then other days, between the breakfast rush and the lunch rush while cookies and scones and croissants bake in the ovens, they’ll split a tray of oatmeal cookies over coffee and just talk.

It’s a little like Harry remembers from working in this bakery as a kid, back before he’d gone east for a gap year and only gotten as far as Portugal before he lost his heart, and got a law degree he hopes he’ll never need to put to use. Before he came home and Barbara sold him the place for cheap because she was ready to retire, anyway, was just waiting for him to come home the long way round first. And. And that’s it, really, Harry knows. He’s home, now.

Harry wipes his hands on his apron and hustles to the front, where Niall’s rocking back and forth on his heels with his hands in his pockets. Harry gives himself just a moment to take in the new glasses sitting on the bridge of his nose, and then he’s pulling Niall into his arms, or maybe falling into Niall’s, it’s hard to tell.

“Thought you weren’t getting here till tomorrow,” Harry says. He steps back from Niall, his palm cupped round the back of Niall’s neck. He carries so much tension in his shoulders. And his hair is so soft.

“Let Tully do the show today,” Niall shrugs. “Took a long weekend.”

“I’m glad to see you,” Harry says. “I can give you my keys if you want to have a kip at mine, or -”

Niall’s already nudging Harry back to the kitchen. “Like I haven’t sat around watching you bake before.”

He keeps Harry company as the late morning gives way to afternoon, the light in the windows shifting from pearly gray to deep gold. In a strange way, it’s like Niall was always there, or always meant to be. He fits perfectly on the stainless steel counter between the fridge and the heavy mixer, steadily working his way through all the cookies and bread that came out not looking perfect enough.

Harry’s hanging up his apron on the hook by the door and locking the front door almost before he knows it. That’s one of the upsides about being a baker, that his job is done by mid-afternoon. He turns to Niall, whose eyes look so bright under England’s drizzly sunshine. He looks older, again, than Harry remembers. Little lines beside his eyes and at the corners of his mouth, like parentheses. “What do you want to do now?” Harry asks.

“Well,” says Niall. “Reckon we could drop by and see your mum, or go for a walk. Drove by the apple orchard on my way in, they’re open to pickers if you want to make a pie. Got all day.”

Harry smiles. “Yeah,” he says. “Got all day.”


End file.
